Moscow mayor plans to tame the winter sky

The mayor of Moscow has a scheme for tricking the sky out of its snow this winter, with the help a few million dollars from the city's tremendous budget.

Mayor Yury Luzhkov's plan envisions his office hiring Russian Air Force pilots to ambush the clouds outside the capital by spraying a fine chemical mist over them, according to a report carried by Time magazine.

The sprayed mist would cool the atmosphere enough to force the clouds into dumping their snow prematurely, preventing "very big and serious snow" from falling on the city.

"You know how every year on City Day and Victory Day we create the weather?" Luzhkov asked a group of farmers outside Moscow in September, according to Russian media reports.

"Well, we should do the same with the snow! Then outside Moscow there will be more moisture, a bigger harvest, while for us it won't snow as much. It will make financial sense."

Authorities are optimistic about the idea, saying it would do much for Muscovites' quality of life, making it easier to manage traffic and road safety in snow-ridden months — November to March.

Luzhkov, whom first in 2002 proposed a 30 billion dollar project to divert and reverse the flow of the vast River Ob through Siberia to help quench parched Central Asian republics, insists this plan is foolproof. Scientists were not in favor of the 2002 project, saying it was not practicable.

Moscow is not new to weather-taming ventures of the kind, as the Air Force is annually tasked in May and September to assure that events on Victory Day and City Day — respectively — go undistracted by rain.

The millions of dollars spent on the city's sky do not even come near burning a hole in Moscow's $40 billion a year budget, which is larger than New York City's budget.

The Moscow City Council has endorsed the plan.